Everyday Systems

DC,

Those are great lines. The second I hadn't noticed till you pointed it out.

"systematically heroic" -- I love that.

Reinhard

1. Have a beverage -- even a caloric one. 2. While you're enjoying that beverage, take comfort that you're building habit by holding out. You're teaching hunger a lesson, that it has to wait till meal time. Be firm and soon enough very few such lessons will be required. 3. Don't listen to the siren ...

I think it's safest to try for all in one physical plate, both for the sake of habit forming clarity and to take advantage of caloric "displacement." Yes, salad is not very caloric and nutrient dense. But that's a GOOD thing! Use it to displace denser stuff. Salad shouldn't give you license to eat E...

Looks interesting.

Thanks for the link!

Reinhard

Welcome to the club, Marianna! I'm sorry you haven't met with more striking results yet, but moderation is a slow business. Keep at it and I'm confident the results will come. Are you serious? Really? I am! Habit is powerful. Be strict and you'll build a psychological ring of fire around the esses. ...

That's great news, StrawberryRoan. Congratulations and thanks for letting us know!

Reinhard

None yet... and I'm afraid it may be a while. Two blocking issues: 1) It's clearly much harder than the google gadget. I have very little discretionary time at the moment. Still have to wrap up the podcast "trilogy..." 2) I don't have an iphone and am unlikely to get one. It's hard for me to motivat...

Friday May 15th: no-s and shovelglove special day. We were invited over to a good friend's fancy housewarming dinner. He'd mentioned that his girlfriend had baked a fancy molten chocolate cake, so no no-s was a no-brainer, but I also knew we'd be getting home too late for shovelglove not to be tortu...

I haven't actually seen the book, but the concept has been mentioned a few times before, and it does sound reasonable and very no-s-compatible. I probably wouldn't advise starting out with this extra rule, but it might be a very natural mod if you find you're in the market for one. But as with all m...

We were visiting my folks in NYC for Easter, and I invited my brother, who'd been boasting about this physical condition, to arm wrestle. He was initially contemptuous: "Are you sure you want to do this? You look a little narrow in the shoulders. How much do you weigh? I've got 30 pounds on you! I'v...

Congratulations on the move, Deb, sounds great on a number of levels.

Best to you both,

Reinhard

Cassie, The hardest, most important part about shovelglove (or any exercise) is carving out the time -- making it a consistent, regular habit. So I wouldn't worry up front about how efficient your movements are right now, whether you're using a broom or a sledge, doing jumping jacks, or just standin...

Welcome! Yeah, it is surprisingly hard -- in a surprisingly fun way. 12 pounds doesn't sound like much, but with three feet of leverage, it's plenty. That being said, I'm flattered that someone with your training and background agrees. Reinhard P.S. your English is great. I'd never have noticed anyt...

(belated) welcome Pewari and Guadopt! Butterfly: does it have to be 21 days in a row of only greens, or is it 21 days of no reds? 21 days of no reds - I presume if for example, at day 10 we "get off track", we have to start over? I'm afraid so. It takes many, maybe even most people a few times to ma...

Thursday May 14: Tasks Failure. Got too caught up with work stuff and neglected hebrew study routine.

I promise I'll have it out by next week at the latest -- I've got notes for about half of it already. It's great to see that it's resonating with people.

And I may have to squeeze in the phrase "cheats in disguise" -- thanks for that ~reneew!

Reinhard

Glad to hear you're back with it!

Great walking in Somerville/Cambridge, isn't it?

Audiobooks are a great incentive to walk. Once you start to associate the two activities, you'll be looking for excuses to walk somewhere.

Reinhard

Thanks for the update, sherlock! I think the 14 minute temporal structure is more important than the kind of exercise you do, but I am very partial to swinging a sledgehammer around, and it's gratifying to hear that you're back with it too. The mace swings are fun, but I am not sure how effective If...

Meg has just posted her 10 month "testimonial" here (big numbers! with pictures! of a baby!)

http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=5021

Reinhard

Congratulations, Meg! And thank you so much for posting -- pictures too! It looks like phpbb wants urls to the exact jpg files. I tracked them down from the links you posted above and posted them here: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3299/3526274482_e31c301df3.jpg After http://farm4.static.flickr.com...

Hi Cassie, I have a few other systems for "distraction management" besides weekend luddite. 1. Anti-bookmarks http://www.everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=1430 2. Blimits http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=2607 They're both pretty similar, and like weekend luddite, come at the proble...

Restricting caloric drinks between meals might be a good mod.... but I think the vanilla no-s policy of excluding caloric drinks (except sugar soda) from restriction is a better starting point for most. The main reason is I think it's just too hard for most people. Between meal drinks are a necessar...

Welcome, Rocket26! Glad you think so.

I've been meaning to take a look at "The End of Overeating." Thanks for the link.

Reinhard

This is a great one. Thank you, gionta! I think someone posted it ages ago -- but it was due for a repost. The only problem with the poem is snacks have a tendency to make our necks thicker rather than "thinner." But I can't immediately think of an appropriate rhyme for that... any poets lurking? Ju...

turtledove from washington just added a "testimonial" describing how she lost 10 pounds in ~6 months and "couldn't be happier with this system": http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=5011 Barbara: sorry you post slipped under the radar. Non-weekend S-days are pretty much your call. If you ha...

turtledove, Congratulations and thank you for posting here! It's almost counterintuitive to think that simply regulating the times you eat can have such a beneficial effect. I wonder whether it's counter-intuitive or too intuitive. In a way, no-s is almost offensively obvious. Although I freely admi...

Glad you liked it.

Shiho has a bunch of other good stuff on her youtube channel too. She's utterly brilliant at this. She can wrap a present and it's almost like origami -- it's a pity to open it.

Happy mothers day!

Reinhard

- no sweets except for in front of others on special occasions ( don't eat them alone) MaryAnn This is a good rule, even just to think about. It shows how disordered our eating has become. People who drink alone are called alcoholics. I don't think eating alone is much better. I use my 8x8 square s...

Welcome back, Laff!

Sorry I didn't see your post sooner -- last couple of weeks have been a little nuts. Last couple of months, come to think of it.

Reinhard

Congratulations and welcome! (sorry for the delay)

It's good not to read too much into immediate results, but hey, might as well enjoy them.

Reinhard

This can be a very touchy subject... Some people feel they need the stuff, other's think it's poison. I'm sort of in between. I don't like it, and I'm suspicious of it. But I don't think there's any clear evidence (yet?) that it's bad for you (no need to post all the pro and contra links again, plea...

I've been with No S since the end of March, and April wasn't very good (many many reds) . I'm writing this , and I'm thinking that my sole objectives for May should be to try to not have any reds, and not weigh myself until the end of May (which will be very hard for me) -- and see what the results...

Cassie, The best rules in the world (and I'm not saying these are) won't do you any good if you can't stick with them. If I were you, I'd "reboot" my efforts by reducing them to 2: 1) vanilla no-s (subject to tweaks if necessary after a solid month) 2) 14 minutes of ANY KIND of exercise every N-day ...

I lost about 20% (210->170) but it was never a "goal." I just ate and moved moderately and that's where I wound up. I'd be cautious about results goals like this. I think more often than not, they are counterproductive. They take your focus off behavior, they are difficult to come up with realistica...

bad idea? Yes! 20 pounds is really, really heavy when you're swinging it around on the end of a stick. Jumping from 8 seems very, very dangerous. I think you'll be surprised by how much heavier just a little extra weight feels. It's great that you got three months under your belt, but it's a blip c...

This is great:

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/j/james/w ... pter8.html

I'll pull out a few favorite quotes when I get a minute...

Reinhard

I drink only whole milk. Sure, on a narrow biochemical level whole milk has more fat and calories, but look at the big picture behavior of drinking whole milk versus the the behavior of drinking skim. Back when people were thin a few decades ago they drank much, much more whole milk than we do today...

I was forwarded another good habit quote last week: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Reinhard Engels <reinhard.engels@gmail.com> Date: Fri, May 1, 2009 at 12:47 PM Subject: Re: feedback To: Anonymous ... That's a great quote! Though I'm a collector of habit quotes I haven't seen that on...

I don't worry at all about S-days. Some are not too different from 3-meal N-days (+ some dessert, at least). Others would be embarrassing if someone was following me around with a camera. But don't worry about these either (except to occasionally look over my shoulder to make sure someone isn't ACTU...

Another great idea from Shiho:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYe0G5OP ... annel_page

(guest starring my wife and daughters in the pictures)

And of course, edible treats are totally legit (and in my family, required!) on mother's day as well.

Reinhard

Thanks for the link... That back around the head move does look very cool -- looks sort of like a one handed version of the move in Aparjito. http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=1975 It does look a little scary (and requires high ceilings). Might give it a try this freestyle-friday.... (I ...

Congratulations and thanks for letting us know!

I just can't believe that 14 minutes exercise a day can have such striking results. Why doesn't everybody know about this???

You got me.

I'm still hoping eventually they will.

Reinhard

BirdieGirl, Don't beat yourself up for having done this, but I don't think it's a good idea. Some relevant "teaser content" from the book: pages 53-54 Is It Extra- Good to Eat Fewer Meals? Skipping meals, especially breakfast, is strongly asso- ciated with obesity. It isnâ€™t extra-goodâ€” itâ€™s ex...

We did the interview last week already. I kind of rambled incoherently for the first few minutes (the shovelglove part -- sorry shuggers), but Jimmy's a great host and he really put me at ease, and I think I found my stride towards the middle and end. I like to think my obvious lack of "media traini...

Finallyfree, I think 14 pounds in 4 months sounds pretty great -- congratulations and thank you for letting us know! And this makes me even happier to read: Quote: .... obsession with eating. ... No S Diet has literally freed me from all that. Eating (or not eating) is no longer my primary occupatio...

(Reinhard here: finallyfree asked me to move her testimonial here from another thread) finallyfree writes: After four months, I am 14 pounds down and counting! I am a 49-year old 5'4" female who has struggled with weight issues since high school. Back then, thanks to the media, I thought I was overw...

FinallyFree just posted a great "testimonial" here: http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=4985 Her numbers are great -- but even better is her new found freedom from food obsession. Over the years, through two pregnancies, I've gone up and down on MANY diets, all with one thing in common: ob...

Finallyfree, I think 14 pounds in 4 months sounds pretty great -- congratulations and thank you for letting us know! And this makes me even happier to read: .... obsession with eating. ... No S Diet has literally freed me from all that. Eating (or not eating) is no longer my primary occupation. Rein...

I'm very ashamed to say that I cracked on day 21! How stupid is that? Don't beat yourself up. Human nature is a strange thing. According to Dostoyevski, most prison break attempts occur toward the end of a sentence, because the goal is so unbearably, tantalizingly close. Better luck next go -- just...

Welcome, Birdie, and congratulations on your striking success so far! Even more important is how much you're enjoying it. A little hunger between meals can seem scary at first because people are so unaccustomed to it nowadays, but it's vastly better than all that anxiety -- especially since, as peop...

I did a some quick searching on the bulletin board and found a few relevant posts: http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=36978&highlight http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=11098&highlight=triglycerides#11098 http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=55533&highlight=cholesterol...

Rheinhard should contact Oprah. I think it's probably easier to contact the President :-) But I assume her underlings are constantly scouring the web and bookstores for new material, so if no-s continues to spread, they're bound to find it eventually, right? This may sound like hubris, but it's rea...

All I know is Valerie went down to 1200 calories a day for that bikini photo shoot for People. That's wonderful and all, but how long can she keep that up? I think the "bikini shoot for People" is the real operative factor in her (and all celebrities) diets. I don't want to be too uncharitable, but...

It's a funny thing, I think most people on No-s wind up thinking less about food in a negative, anxious way, but MORE about it in a positive, "mindful" way: there's no thoughtless, automatic wolfing down when you sit down to a real meal with real appetite.

Reinhard

Well, I am almost embarrassed to say that the economy will probably suffer greatly if I quit buying sweets and snacks. Yes, I'm afraid No S probably won't stimulate the economy too much... they don't call it the "No $ Diet" for nothing. :-) But maybe decreased medical bills will reduce the national...

Glad you all liked it and thanks for letting me know!

More soon...

Reinhard

Welcome TunaFishKid!

Great username -- and great attitude.

I enjoy tuna sandwiches pretty regularly, and don't skimp on the full fat mayo.

Reinhard

I'm a little rusty... so go easy. But now that I've publicly committed to two more episodes, hopefully I'll come back up to speed soon. http://everydaysystems.com/podcast/episode.php?id=35 Reinhard P.S. the fact that I got this out at all (and in the nick of time) is a testament to the power of mont...

Welcome, khristal! He just says to eat when you're hungry and stop before you get full Yeah... that sounds so nice, but it just doesn't work, and the reason why isn't too mysterious: http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=57738#57738 That's why I think this will be perfect. It's structured bu...

That's great! Welcome!

But do realize that 8 pounds in a week is unusual -- and you're not likely to continue losing at that rate.

The strength of no-s is that it's LASTINGLY (and pleasurably) effective.

But -8 pounds off the bat certainly is nice. Congratulations!

Reinhard

Great to see your regular updates here again! Opportunistic chinups are fun. Even better than most home installed bars are what you find an most playgrounds (they are sturdy!). If you're interested in "good form" I've found a lot of the enormous he-men banging out chipups on youtube have dreadful fo...

Doudou,

It's up to you. If you celebrated with your grandma and this was her birthday cake, I'd say certainly take it as an S-day. If your grandma was thousands of miles away and your cake had nothing directly to do with her, I'd mark it red.

So welcome, I hope?

Reinhard

Thanks, Deb!

Friday April 24th: tasks failure. Missed 2 work tasks. It's been a while! Using the habitcal to track my "personal punch cards" task completion has been astonishingly effective.

Reinhard

I've used both (my 12 pounder is hickory, 16 and 20 are fiberglass). I like the idea of the hickory better, but I honestly don't notice the different after the first swing. I hadn't noticed that one kind was consistently cheaper than the other. I would just go with price. The prices on amazon are in...

April 2009 Update: For the last few weeks I've been doing things SLIGHTLY (but perhaps, significantly) differently. I decided to take the non-shovelglove movements out of my 14 minutes and do them (and/or some other stuff) "opportunistically" during the day. The shovelglove part is still exactly as ...

Saturday April 18: Glass ceiling failure. 1 drink over the limit. I'm amazed that's all it was -- saw an old drinking buddy on my vacation, a genius of drinking games. The glasses were on the large side, but under the circumstances, I'm pretty pleased with how it went.

Wed April 8 - Thu April 9: No-s and shovelglove special days (passover) Wed April 15: No-s special day (vacation) Wed April 15 - Thu April 16: Shovelglove special days (vacation) Mon April 20: Shovelglove special day (vacation) I actually did remarkably well limiting my nws days this vacation (6 wee...

Hi Deb,

If you untick your profile setting "always show email address" your email should be safe from spammers (at least spammers scraping this site).

Maybe I should make this the default...

Reinhard

Welcome back!

So sorry to hear about you're loss...

As LA points out, you're in good company here as a "prodigal." It's the unusual no-esser who gets it down on the first attempt.

Reinhard

"Meal replacement" -- what an intrinsically horrible concept.

I would stay far away from that trash. Meals aren't the problem, they're the solution.

Reinhard

As nice as it sounds, "eating when you're hungry" is not at ALL the way people traditionally ate. They ate when it was time to eat -- as you do on No-s. Relevant teaser content from the book (this gets reposted a lot, I should probably add something like it to the home page): from pages 50-53 Isnâ€™...

I'm a little too brain dead with sleep deprivation ("vacation" with small children) right now to comment on this, besides giving my hearty "amen!"

Thank you, dockanz!

More tomorrow...

Reinhard

Phineas recently posted our first (I think?) updated new style testimonial:

Since the original post was made I have lost another 25 pounds, placing me right around 170. That makes for a net loss of 55 pounds in a little over seven months.

http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic ... 7655#57655

Wow!

It's great to see these "new style" testimonials actually being updated -- especially with such impressive news.

Congratulations and thank you for letting us know!

Reinhard

I am so sorry to hear this. I know diet is a trivial thing in comparison with your loss, but no more so than brushing your teeth in the morning. It's something that one way or another has to be done, and if you do it right, moderately, you may find it a surprisingly great help rather than a petty di...

Marc -- Anyway I don't have hard feelings with anyone here over all this and I've apologized about 2-3 times already if anyone has been 'offended' accidentally. Great! Thanks in advance for being more careful of our 'thin skins' going forward. Doudou -- I think I just have to echo what many others h...

Boy, going on vacation can be dangerous when you run a bulletin board I see! I am NOT going to name any specific names here since I got into BIG trouble last time I did that, but let me just say in a general sort of way, not targeting anyone in particular, or even implying that anything of this natu...

Hi Ms. By default, the habitcal will show the current month. But if you set it to future or past months, the changes will then show. All this stuff goes in the url, so if you bookmark it, you can jump to explicit dates. Does that make sense? And work for you? I double checked and setting future date...

I call the No S Diet "the Grandma Diet" on the home page, but if things keep going the way they are in society at large, I'm going to have to call it the "Great Grandma" or "Great, Great, Grandma" diet instead.

Here's hoping "Grandma" does the trick for most of us,

Reinhard

I'm certainly not a fan of the amounts of sugar we eat these days. But I don't think it's necessary (or even possible) to go back tens or hundreds of thousands of years to find healthy eating patterns. About two or three decades will do, depending on where you live. That being said, as far as I unde...

On a seperate note, it's not clear to me if you recommend doing other things in the same session. Such as the "degraded beast". If you want to, I recommend it. If not, don't. I think shovelglove gives a pretty complete upper body workout, and even a surprising amount of lower body (though I would r...

This is a very common concern. But I don't think it's a real issue. It's true you won't feel the "burn" as much in your abs as in your arms, back, etc, but that doesn't mean that they're not being worked well and hard. These are the kinds of movements our ancestors abs were ACTUALLY used for, after ...

That's great.

Welcome back!

Reinhard

Thanks for the link! I love that the only research they cite (the French eating patterns, not compensating for snack calories at meals) contradicts their whole argument. And "snacking is bad" is a myth? Who exactly is propounding this myth? All I can see (except around here) are pro -snack messages....

I'd say "never."

Those concoctions sound awful -- and from what I understand, the science behind them is dubious at best: snake oil in powdered form.

Anyway, best of luck whatever you wind up doing!

Reinhard

Erica,

Welcome to No-S and thanks for the blog link!

Sounds like your first few days are going very well.

Reinahrd

Uh, not really... but here's an article that mentions both:

http://www.examiner.com/x-4610-Philadel ... -a-Trainer

(click hypertext that reads "sledgehammers" towards the bottom)

Reinhard

Ooops. Just fixed it. Thanks, noni!

Great link, Brother John. Thanks! I especially like this quote: An Englishman and a Scotsman were discussing oats. The Englishman, with his nose in the air said "In England we feed oats to our horses, and in Scotland you feed oats to your men...", to which the Scotsman replied "...that's why in Engl...

Yeah... "Intuitive Eating" a nice idea, but I think it's (mostly) wishful thinking. Relevant (lengthy) "teaser" content from the no-s book: pages 50-53 You often hear formulas like â€œEat only when youâ€™re hun- gryâ€ and â€œEat what you want, not what you shouldâ€ touted as liberating, antidiet wei...

Welcome, Aya! I kind of like what I put on the home page in response to this question (hidden way at the bottom): Is it hard? It's hard in a different way than most other diets. It can seem harder at first because it doesn't pretend that there is some trick to bypassing the work of building new habi...

If you didn't eat it, no problem, eat something else. If you did eat it, well, at least it's over. You'll know to avoid that recipe next time. If you ate half/some fraction of it, then I guess then have an additional fractional "virtual plate" of something decent. I think that covers all the bases. ...

Easter certainly qualifies as an S-day, but treats for the eyes are nice too. Some relevant craft "how-to" videos from my talented friend Shiho Masuda: 1) "Furoshiki" gift basket: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpPTcbuaRKA 2) Easter confetti gift box: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So0bo3PEqSo My br...

Saturday April 4th: Glass ceiling failure. My first "tandem" glass ceiling failure with a fellow practitioner. He'd had a rough breakup and needed some consolation. 2 drinks over the limit.

Hi Pewari, Nothing very polished yet, but here are a few old threads/systems on the subject: http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=2052 http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=23 http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=22 It's certainly a subject that's been very much on my mind ...

That is a great one.

Makes me think I should look deeper into combining shovelgove and (fast) urban ranger.

Reinhard

Welcome back, Phayze! And congratulations on your clean bill of health.

May have to look into the juggling myself... could use an everyday system for coordination.

Reinhard

Dear Deb, Best of luck -- I know you can do this. And I think it makes a lot of sense. The wonderful thing about no-s (and a shovelglovish 14 minutes of exercise every N-day) is that it's intrinsically moderate. Normally the phrase "hardcore ultra strict" should set off alarms of unsustainable extre...

AmyLiz has just posted a very moving and enlightening account of how no-s has helped her get past deep and long standing habits of disordered eating:

http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=4847

Reinhard

Heidi, Wow. I'm not sure "stress" is sufficiently strong a word to describe what you've been going through. Or rather I'm sure that it isn't -- remotely. You have my deepest sympathy -- and awed respect. Diet seems and IS a trivial thing compared to these ordeals. But it's a trivial thing, like brus...

Everyday Systems

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